QWIKI: a new way to experience information?

Now this looks interesting for quickly introducing a new topic at a moment’s notice. Qwiki is a new way to experience information and at first glance it looks ideal for classroom use. You simply stick the name of a location, person, object etc into the search bar and sit back whilst a lovely computerised lady talks about key details. She provides an overview via maps, video footage, images, diagrams etc.

Warning: although the said computerised lady does not pronounce everything correctly, she does a pretty got job! Qwiki is still in the ‘Alhpa’ experimentation stage but well worth checking out.

This is what happened when we entered ‘London’ and ‘Teacher’ into the search bar (see below). It’s well worth keeping an eye on as I’m sure it will only get better.

Qwiki describe their mission as:

Qwiki’s goal is to forever improve the way people experience information.

Whether you’re planning a vacation on the web, evaluating restaurants on your phone, or helping with homework in front of the family Google TV, Qwiki is working to deliver information in a format that’s quintessentially human – via storytelling instead of search.

We are the first to turn information into an experience. We believe that just because data is stored by machines doesn’t mean it should be presented as a machine-readable list. Let’s try harder.

Think of asking your favorite teacher about Leonardo Da Vinci, or your most well-traveled friend about Buenos Aires: this is the experience Qwiki will eventually deliver, on demand, wherever you are in the world… on whatever device you’re using.

We’ve all seen science fiction films (or read novels) where computers are able to collect data on behalf of humans, and present the most important details. This is our goal at Qwiki – to advance information technology to the point it acts human.

Currently, Qwiki’s technology has been applied to describe millions of popular topics – but soon we’ll do much more. Our team needs your help in reaching our goal: join our alpha now